It wasn’t really a “worst”, especially after the Brodus/Curt Hawkins matches or The Big Show’s 180 minute assault on Kofi Kingston in a steel cage a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted so much more out of a formal Brodus/Big Show Raw match. I actually liked this less than Show’s spear -> table thrashing attack from a while back. Show demolished him with extreme prejudice there. Here, he won by falling on him during an interrupted body slam. Really? I get that it’s time for Brodus to lose, but does taking a sudden pin and getting knocked out on the ramp protect him anymore than a hard-fought match that ends in a knockout punch?

I don’t know, it didn’t seem like a big deal either way, but I want my Hoss Fights, and with Lord Tensai getting stuffed into a production crate and shipped back to OVW I only have so many options. Vickie should’ve sent Ryback out in the middle of this and have him god damn demolish show and Brodus and double-Muscle Buster them like he would to Fillmore and Hayes, then have him be all FEED ME MORE and organize a reality show for WWE Network where they have to find some Haystacks Calhoun and Loch Ness Monster looking f**kers to hang with Skip.

(I really missed Ryback this week, I don’t know if you can tell.)

Best: Did You Know?

I’ve got a couple of jokes for this, so choose your favorite:

Did You Know?

This would still seem shorter than a single 3-hour Raw.

Did You Know?

If you were to watch every ‘Necessary Roughness’ commercial during an episode of Raw non-stop for 24 hours a day, it would take you over 75 days to watch them all.

They should bring back Sean O’Haire and have him approach guys backstage and be all, “last Monday, WWE Raw had a higher social media score than Fox News, ESPN or Nickelodeon. But I’m not telling you anything you already Did Not Know”.

Worst: It May Be Time To See What TNA’s Up To, Jack Swagger

Pro-tip for Dolph Ziggler: Remember last week when you had a tough time beating Jack Swagger? Next time you wrestle him, bring a stuffed animal to the ring and hit him with it. If you believe hard enough, he will die.

But yeah, I thought Santino getting his first United States Championship defense in like three months (with the announcers bringing that and his six month title reign up for the first time) meant Swagger was going to squash him, get it back, and get to be a thing again. The loss against Ziggler severed him from Vickie, so to survive he’d need to refocus, go back to the “american american american” well and maybe eventually get another swank ECW-esque series with Christian over which show’s secondary title is the best. I was pretty surprised to see Swagger get suplexed around (!) and lose clean to an Animorph.

WWE loves to tell that story where a guy loses over and over for a year, and we convince ourselves that it’s building to something when the only thing it can “build to” is NOT LOSING ALL THE TIME. You can tell that story more quickly by NOT HAVING A GUY LOSE ALL THE TIME. Ryback’s kids are there to lose all the time. The 6’5 NCAA Champion and former World Heavyweight Champion is not necessarily there to do that.

But whatever, it’s Jack Swagger. He should seriously consider doing the Christian/Matt Morgan tour of TNA thing where he slums it for a few years, learns how to wrestle guys who didn’t come up in WWE developmental and come back with something better than “I’m from America”.

Worst: Send Me Those Clothes, You Assholes

Oh man, how much do I hate John Cena and Zack Ryder for digging a People Power shirt out of the donation bin and tossing it in the garbage as a throwaway reference? Hey Derrick Bateman, I know you read this column and live in the WWE Zone or whatever, go find that bin and ship me its contents. I’ll pay you for the shipping. If his track jacket ends up in the garbage I swear to God

Best: Katy Perry’s Inspirational Movie About Her Struggles Is In 3-D And Can Double As A Pepsi Commercial

People stage-diving to Katy Perry divorce songs with Pepsis in their hands is about living every single moment. I hope somebody makes a biopic about me one day and it’s just footage of me drinking Mountain Dew Throwback and going down waterslides in smell-o-vision.

I think it could be alright. Granted, I’d prefer a documentary on the paths Marit and Marion went on after M2M broke up (spoiler: Marit went on the correct one), but Katy “Ha! Wigs” Perry: Part Of Me 3D has potential to be watchable.

I attended Raw last night, and there was stuff that happened after the show went off the air. Big Show brought out Tensai for a two-on-one handicap match against Cena after he Colossoly Choked him out. Cena rallied back and won. The Big Johnny Laurinaitis came out, tried to ht Cena with a chair, and missed and got Attitutinally Adjusted. Also, Bi Show came out and WMD’d Brodus Clay twice, but Raw only aired one of them. I assume this stuff happens all the time, because i haven’t attended a wrestling event since middle school (I’m 24 now). But I just figured you’d like to know Laurinaits was there, at least in (kind of) spirit.

Knoxville, you should be able to tell the difference between Titus and Percy by now: MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!

I love how Brandon spends all his time talking about how AJ needs to be more than just a girl trying to date them and blah blah woman rights blah blah, then turns into every other guy and starts wanking it to her in her underwear and has it be a best. Way to keep your facade up dude.

Certainly not a facade. The column is nothing more than my opinion, and my opinions are both “women should be treated better on wrestling TV” and “beautiful women are beautiful”. I don’t want them to be grey cardboard cutouts, and I certainly don’t want to zap the sexuality from them, I just like when they’re treated like three-dimensional humans of worth. And when men are, and everyone else is.

It’d be cool if there was a way to export the comments to Word and be able to read them all later. I used to spend about an hour clicking the little bar at the bottom if I missed something, but it takes too long.

“The epic story of one man’s love for Mountain Dew Throwback. Tom Hanks stars in ‘Best and Worst of My Life – The Brandon Stroud Story’ coming to a theater near you in IMAX 3D, smell-o-vision & smision”

I want them to keep doing this “Raw legends come back to beat up Heath Slater” thing every week for the rest of the year until they’re down to like “My god that’s Beau Beverly!” or the Berzerker or something.

Also I want the last guy to be Barry Horowitz and when he and Slater punch each other the world explodes.

I’m with you everywhere concerning the Battle Royale. I just finished going back and watching NXT from when Regal took over and I’ve taken a mighty shine to both Kaitlyn and Maxine.

Also, I almost died when I saw a Sean O’Haire reference. I remember really liking him back in the day. But Test was my favorite wrestler back then as well. Can someone who was a more discerning fan in 2002 tell me if Sean O’Haire was good or not?

That seems unfair, to say O’Haire was “never anything in the ring”. Considering he was pushed out onto television long before he was ready as part of the Natural Born Thrillers, O’Haire probably had the most potential of anyone in that group, and it’s a shame he wasn’t a) given more time at the Power Plant, and b) able to spend about five years working WCW style, as he had the intensity and athleticism that he really could’ve been something special. His time as part of the WCW tag champions before WCW folded provided some very exciting matches.

Sean O’Haire somehow convinced the Internet that he was this colossal, charismatic athlete who could do anything if they’d just give him a chance. The reason the WWE gimmick didn’t work is because he couldn’t do it live, and he couldn’t get it across in the ring. At the Power Plant and in TNBT he was just one of the guys, to the point that Chuck Palumbo ended up having a way more prosperous career.

What I’m getting at is that he WASN’T anything in the ring, and could’ve beens don’t make it so.

Glad to see everyone had the same reaction to the Divas Battle Royal: expecting it to be really horrible and exploitative and then finding out it was mostly benign and just bad from a wrestling standpoint.

It’s like having your tank on E and thinking gas will be $4 but when you pull up to the station it’s actually like $3.15. It still sucks way more than it should, but it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.

Okay, I have a bone to pick with your Best: Money in the Bank Matches With Actual Guys in It.

First off, for all intents and purposes, the “WWE Championship Money in the Bank Ladder Match” is going to be contested by FOUR people. Beyond that, the idea that only former champions can be in the match is so completely ass backwards for a couple reasons. A. That leads to your MITB match having FOUR people in it. The only options left are Sheamus, Del Rio, Mysterio, Orton and Sid if he wants to stick around. John Cena vs. Kane vs. Big Show vs. Chris Jericho is not a match that I want to see at all. And it’s a match none of them need because B. The MITB is for young guys trying to get over. Guys like Daniel Bryan and Del Rio who are on cusp of the main event scene and need that last push. Cody Rhodes would be a perfect example.

I agree that if they are going to do this having Cena win and lose the briefcase is probably the best bet but first, you imply him cashing it in against Punk at SummerSlam, meaning that Bryan is losing at MITB, which is probably true but still makes me extremely sad. And then you say “it brings Punk’s reign closer to a year. A win all round.” In no way, do I see how that is a win in any way.

There’s a second Money in the Bank that I assume is going to have most of your usual Money in the Bank participants in it anyway, so this is a solid storyline way to get another match, fill all the old guys that are going to be involved in the WWE Title hunt anyway, and give them something to do with potential for various story tropes pulled out, while still having a proper up-n-comers MITB match.

Maybe they can shoehorn Triple H in there to save the match (slow-wanking motion). Also, Brock Lesnar held the Undisputed Championship, which I believe was converted back into the WWE Championship when Triple H was awarded the World Heavyweight Title, so he qualifies too.

@Schmantony Pretty sure they’re doing the same thing for the World Heavyweight Money in the Bank, which means Ziggler can win so that’s not all bad.

@Arrested The people I listed are literally the only former WWE champions on the roster. Del Rio is more than likely be involved in a match with Sheamus, Orton will still be suspended and Mysterio could show up but I have no idea what the hell is going on with him.

There’s no way the Cena MITB match won’t have at least 6 people in it. My guesses would be Miz and Mysterio will get added in the next two weeks. They need dudes beside Jericho who can do laddery stuff and get their asses kicked by the big guys.

I don’t know if anyone is still reading these comments but I retract most of these comments after reading the SmackDown spoilers because the World Heavyweight MITB is most certainly not former champions and sounds AMAZING.

I would’ve grown a newfound respect for Cena if his promo was about Animorphs instead of Star Wars, where Vince is Elfangor, Big Show’s a Hork-Bajir, Otunga’s a Yeerk, and Brodus Clay can only morph into a dinosaur but since he’s never touched a living dinosaur he figures he can disguise himself by dancing like one.

Ok, so does anyone really want to watch Otunga? Seriously? He’s a horrible wrestler with a horrible heel character that pretty much ran it’s course with Johnny’s exit. I love the column, but I don’t understand the weekly Otunga love. Well, I don’t understand the constant Triple H hate either, even though he’s sort of a hit or miss guy at this point.

My biggest problem with WWE TV right now is that they seem to have no respect for their champion, even though they’ve committed to keeping the belt around Punk’s waist. All of the prime TV and PPV spots go to Cena, while Punk’s matches get stuck at the beginning or middle of almost every show/ event. Why the heck is he not in the main event? I wonder if it’s written in Cena’s contract that he just has to have every goddamn main event on every show.

Sometimes I feel like John Cena delivering that abomination of a Star Wars promo On here, I say things that sound like they will hit, but I ultimately don’t know what the fuck i’m saying. Except i am more aware of popculture than him

Jericho: You are so blind! You so do not understand! You weren’t there at the beginning! You don’t know how good it was, how important! This is it for you! This jumped up, firework display of a RAW promo! People like you make me sick! What’s wrong with you?
*Cena maeks sad face*
Jericho: Now, I don’t care, if you saved up all your star wars jokes, take your Yoda impression, and GET OUT!
*Cena runs out, sobbing*
Jericho: *sigh* What a prick.

I just want to see a weekly episodic television show starring Sid, David Keith, and John C Reilly as buddy cop brothers or something. The specifics don’t matter, just put those three guys on a show, let Keith overserious everything, Reilly be Reilly,and Sid do some crazy shit like the “yappa pi” promo, and I’m good.

Even though Sid and his “stuck-to-his-sides” arms were straight out of Seinfeld, I truly enjoyed seeing him back in the ring. I’ve always been partial to the “Master of the World” gimmick mostly because imagining Sid on some throne consolidating his power is something of a pastime.

But man oh man am I sick of the “Love John Cena because he’s good to kids” Make-A-Wish foundation promos while simultaneously showcasing him as a jock, douchebag bully when he’s dealing with his antagonists. It’s so asinine that I’ve accepted the (non)challenge of changing the channel anytime that dude or something about him is on the air.

I’m not saying there aren’t things to like about Cena outside of wrestling, but that’s just it. Outside of wrestling. In the wrestling world, he’s cringeworthy and the video package after video package of showing him as a good guy outside of the ring does no favors for those who already despise him. I’m sure plenty of wrestlers are good people who do good things in their free time (what little there may be of it), but in the glorious world of kayfabe, those good deeds are irrelevant. They mean nothing in regards to the matches, stories, etc.

Also, B, I’ll ashamedly admit that I wasn’t really sure about the whole AJ experiment until last night. And it wasn’t seeing AJ in her skivvies doing the “Yes” chant for all she’s worth that convinced me either (although that certainly wasn’t a hindrance by any means). It was the fact that AJ is able to pull mannerisms from various other WWE characters and really make them her own. The Kane head tilt, the “crazy look” that’s a “Randy Orton, Viper/Alpha Predator” trademark (yes, AJ’s is different than Orton’s, but the concept is still the same – essentially a psychotic version of the Hulk Hogan “head shake”), the CM Punk “better than you” smirk, and obviously, the Daniel Bryan “yes” chant. As disparate as these guys are (and I’m really only scratching the surface, I think), the fact that AJ is able to blend them so well speaks not only to her love of the business, but also to her talent and ability to portray an honest-to-god character. Now we just have to hope “creative” doesn’t screw this up.

The only thing I want to see of Kate Perry in 3-D is her feet.
Psycho Sid – Not sure how I feel. I remember he attacked Arn, who is one of my favorites of all time. Gotta admit, I’ve always loved his powerbomb. Better than Nash’s, perhaps below Vader’s.
I”m going to start commenting per page. I always forget mild to moderately clever or weird things by the end. This will be the thread.

Never been much of a fan of the release power bomb, although Sid always had some muscle behind it. Last Ride Power Bomb was always impressive to me. It’s been a few days, but someone hit a power bomb (hell it might have been Sid’s) that made me wonder if the dude’s head was busted open in the back.

Come on, man, Ric WOOOOOOOOO Flair is at least 102 years old. He might still be a limousine-ridin’, jet flyin’, kiss-stealin’, son-of-a-gun but he’s parked in the handicap spot up near the terminal and they’ve got his old butt seated in the chair closes to the exit on the plane.

Every time they have Big Show beat up on Cena in a non-PPV setting it’s always some sort of lame thing like Monday where he puts Cena in the Colossal Clutch and yeah whatever. Why can’t Show just turn up, WMD Cena like…four or five times and make all the Cena-haters happy? Remember when the Rock completely beat the ever-loving crap out of Mankind with, like, eleventy-two completely undefended chair shots directly to his brain? Well that’s what I want to see Show do to Cena with his fist. Every episode of RAW. Also, every episode of Smackdown. Also, every episode or NXT. Also, anytime there’s even a camera within a kilometre of the pair of them.

Currently reading Smackdown spoilers. I’m not gonna be ‘that guy’ and spoil anything; but the description of the show so far makes me wish there was an open thread for SD. …Or at least, makes me wish that more people came back to this thread on Fridays to discuss. I’ll be checking in if I can.
Tiny mini-spoiler: the MITB match for the WHC is… interesting so far.

I second the call for a Smackdown open thread. Doesn’t have to be a write-up or anything, just someplace we can post. Smackdown has become pretty good again ever since Daniel Bryan became one of the top guys on the show. Plus don’t forget Damien Sandow, Antinio Cesaro, and MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! are usually a weekly feature.

Made the mistake of being ‘that guy’ and revealing a spoiler before. I don’t know if it was because I was so excited, or because I picked that moment to throw away any form of intelligence, but I learned.

Ditto on the open thread. Don’t need a write-up but would love to have another night to talk wrestling.

I hope the 1,000th episode goes off the air almost like Conan O’Brien’s tonight show. Except in my version Heath Slater is singing “One Man Band” with Man Mountain Rock playing lead guitar for the entire overrun, and it ends with Cyndi Lauper braining Slater with Henry Godwinn’s slop bucket.

Another thing I wanted to mention: IRS was the first heel I can ever remember really liking while knowing fully that he was a bad guy. I still think I’d like him today though. His finisher was the “Write-off” (puns!) and he called everyone in the crowd tax cheats. Like Rick Rude in suspenders.

So “Kane should drive a car that looks like Kane” might actually be the best thing ever done with Kane. Sorry, Brandon, you know you’re my boy B-ran right here and all, but i think that Destiny should get the shot at writing for WWE.

I want to propose an experiment where we put Destiny and my girlfriend Angie in a room together watching RAW (or Smackdown, or NXT or TNA or whatever. I made Angie watch Chikara the other weekend), and we just hang out behind a mirror and jot down their reactions and ideas for storylines. Is that weird? I can’t tell.

I wasn’t on board this whole AJ thing up until now. I thought it was just transferring the attempted “hoski” thing from Eve to AJ, but now i’m more into the idea that AJ is just there to sow dischord and wreck everything. I’m not very secretly hoping that this turns into some kind of Kingdom Come thing, where the Batman-led CM Punk faction wars with the Superman Daniel Bryan faction over how to stop the crazy destruction rampage of the Kane faction while the AJ supervillain council rubs its hands together in glee. It’ll never happen, but it would be awesome.

Without going back and watching, I assumed that the props around ringside (beach umbrellas, beach balls, etc) reminded folks of the fake, pastel “look at us enjoying time at the beach” vibe that one would get from an Old Navy commercial.
If there’s any more to it than that, I missed it too.

I would’ve bet a large amount of money that Sid was dead. One of my favorite memories from Nitro was a close-up on Sid, yelling in victory after a match (alongside Mach, I think?) and then they did their cut-to-commercial thing with the explosion, and it was like Sid was breathing fire.

The weirdest thing is that on a podcast two weeks, or one week ago, an emailer sent in an almost verbatim Star Wars – John Cena analogy. It was creepy. Someone in WWE Uncreative definitely peeps out the pods.

Decent match between AJ and Layla (decent by Divas’ standards). I appreciate it when ladies wrestle more or less a guys’ style, as opposed to backflips, hair pulls, etc.

I look forward to seeing AJ as special ref for Punk/Bryan; but as usual I’m afraid Creative will mess it up. They’ve done well so far, but it has to happen eventually.
…Also, it’s interesting how *annoying* the YES chant is when AJ does it. She’s like a yapping puppy. Still super cute, but shrill.